


Steady Your Aim

by daisybrien



Category: The Fury Series - Alexander Gordon Smith
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Character Study, Creepy Uncle Trope Whoops, Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Pre-Canon, Protective Siblings, Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, Shooting, Siblings, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 17:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12686637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisybrien/pseuds/daisybrien
Summary: Schiller believes he was born to die.He does, the and the world ends burning - of lavender incense, of dying hearths, of smoking gunpowder and hot metal - all too familiar in his sister's arms.





	Steady Your Aim

**Author's Note:**

> Alright so this deals with themes of Rilke's assault; nothing of that sort is explicitly described or written to derive enjoyment from (and I can't believe I have to say this but if you're here for that go away?? ya nasties) but if that isn't your jam or you're uncomfortable with these topics now is your time to leave. No biggie my guys, you go take care of yourself.
> 
> Started this before Hellwalkers came out intending to finish the triad of 'assailants getting their deserved comeuppance and rotting dead in the ground where they belong' that seemed to be a reoccurring theme in Furnace and the Devil's Engine, and we didn't really get that in the Fury. So here it is. And goddamn now I had to do this with Hellwalkers AGAIN. 
> 
> Also delivering with those supportive sibling relationships that are excellent.
> 
> Anyways.

In the bad times, when anxiety makes his body quake and his heart thrum an uneven rhythm, Schiller believes that he was quite literally born only to die.

Changes in routine give him easy omens, the slow schedule of the days and weeks as they dredge by teetering dangerously on the spire of imminent collapse. His father’s leaving marks the start of his life’s disintegration as he’s sent in a whirlwind of change he can barely adapt to; his mother’s deterioration is another milestone, the day she forgets his name a harbinger of the apocalypse; his sister’s rebellious streaks become the fallout of it all, a chaotic mess of entropic proportions. 

He takes each hit harder than the last, every bombshell crumbling another piece of their foundation. He leans towards his sister, clings his fingers into her sleeves when his hands shake and following her even, calm breathing when his lungs seize. Most of all, he accepts her scolding openly, agreeing when she scoffs at his panicking, rolling her eyes when she moves in to steady him as if there is nothing to knock him off balance, and he can almost believe that the world isn’t falling to bits and trapping him right in the middle.

When he wakes up one morning to the chatter of uneasy arrangements, the smell of bitter, bold coffee brewing invading his senses, he doesn’t have to believe that his world is ending.

He knows it is.

He’s sure of it.

#

“Now look at you two,” the man in front of them says with a chuckle that sends a shiver down Schiller’s spine. “I don’t think any of the photos your parents sent over could do your pretty faces any justice.”

“I didn’t think there were any photos of us to send,” Rilke bites back in reply from her seat, straight-backed and neatly organized in front of her plate. Schiller watches her from the corner of his eye as he hunches over his breakfast; she’s staring forward across the expanse of the dining room table, her eyes challenging and her face contorted with disdain and a disgust that not even she can quite place. “I also didn’t think we had anyone in the family who would care to receive them.”

For someone barely into her mid-teens, still clad in grossly pink pajamas, her stance is almost regal enough to intimidate the hulking frame looming over the other end of the table. If the man wasn’t their uncle – as he had been so recently introduced, with a name he would be glad to forget – Schiller would have expected him to be, at least, greatly perturbed. 

Bastion blood carries heavy influence, he reminds himself, as the man’s face twists into a loose-lipped grin. He watches Rilke wrinkle her nose. 

“Oh, you’re a little rascal, aren’t you?” he jeers. The screech of his chair is violent in Schiller’s ears as he pushes back, lumbering back to the tea table where he pours himself another cup of coffee, his back towards them. “Not such a welcoming face for your new houseguest, is it?”

Rilke seethes, her anger white hot. “You’re not a guest if you’re not welcome.”

Schiller hears the maids waiting by the doors gasp, shuffling on their feet, contemplating the choice of reprimanding her or staying within the familiar limits of their authority. Their uncle does not react, however, only slurps noisily from his mug. When he turns around, the smirk on his face is gone.

“You’re going to have to get used to me either way,” he says. He moseys back to his seat, adjusting the silver watch hidden under the suit cuffs straining against his burly wrists, pretending to analyze it as if they were wasting his time. “I’m going to be here as long as you guys need me.”

“We don’t need you,” Rilke gripes.

“Two children can’t watch their sick mother on their own,” he retorts. He continues before Rilke can bite back. “Your aunt needs eyes on the ground so she can make sure the place is running smoothly. It was more her choice than mine.”

“Doesn’t take much to do better than two children,” Rilke mutters.

The muscles tense in their uncle’s jaw, his eyebrows raised and eyes wide and animalistic. Schiller’s hands dart to grab Rilke’s wrist under the table, a silent warning. He waits for the smash of the ceramic mug against the table that doesn’t happen.

“Well,” the man says, breathing out a laugh that burned like acid. “One of the rascals is also a bitch.” 

With that, Rilke’s wrist jumps in her brother’s grip, her body leaning back as if she had just taken a physical blow. Her mouth opens as she gapes at him, her reply falling silent on her tongue. Her hesitance is what makes Schiller look up, shocked to see his sister at a loss for words, his stomach sinking as she grips him back.

“I should finish unpacking,” he says, breaking the fragile silence that had fallen over them. He drains his mug, leaving the sour stench of cologne and coffee behind him.

#

“I cannot believe this!” Rilke is almost standing on her chair, anger boiling up red on her pale cheeks. Her shrill voice rebounds off their makeshift nest in the library, barely drifting before getting swallowed up in the worn and yellowing pages stacked high to the ceiling. “Some distant relative nobody can’t just decide her husband is going to move into our estate just because she can say so.”

“Rilke,” Schiller begins, his voice a tentative interruption at best, already expecting admonishment before he can even finish. “Maybe we should just try to give this a chance-“

He stops when his sister whips around, hair flying unorderly and nostrils flared. He averts his gaze down to his lap, sinks deeper into his seat against the window reflexively. Its almost muscle memory under his sister’s signature glare, a script he knows best to follow.

“So you’re already bending to his every whim,” she spits. “How predictable of you, little brother.”

“It’s not like we can do anything about it,” Schiller tries to reason. “At least not right now.” He wrings his hands as he watches her get up. He follows the path of her pacing, his head shaking back and forth dizzyingly, like following a tennis ball flying too fast over the net. “I think we should at least give this arrangement a chance.”

“Give the complete stranger a chance!” Rilke gasps, her arms flying above her head, incredulous. “Do you even hear yourself?”

“I don’t like this as much as you do, Rilke,” Schiller says, “but this is what’s happening and we just have to deal with it.”

“Like I should deal with him watching over our mother,” Rilke mutters loudly, “and the entire estate, and us!”

“You know he’s just taking care of the practical stuff,” Schiller says. There is even less conviction than usual in his words now; their uncle didn’t seem like one to want to sincerely socialize with those he deemed lesser, that much had been quite apparent. “Just the hiring. And the money.”

“Like that’s any better,” his sister says. “Giving all that to that damn creep.”

Schiller opens his mouth to reply before she stomps off into the nearest maze of shelves, but whatever weak retort is on his tongue falters and falls flat before it can become tangible. He chews on her words along with the scraped inside of his cheek – a habit he would never be close to breaking - replaying that last word in his mind, tasting its venom like she had spit acid. He finds himself slumping, recounting the morning as Rilke’s footsteps slowly fade and he’s left with his own thoughts, barely there without her other half to fill it.

Creep. It becomes more true as he ruminates, but never in a tangible form he can grasp. There was no creep to be seen on the surface, cleanly shaved and smartly dressed, poised with dignity and crude humor that would pass as charm when he needed it. But there had to be something beneath that had tied that uneasy knot in his stomach in the first place, something about the bulk of his form straining against the seams of his suit or the way his rough fingers clenched white knuckled against his mug. 

It was like he was looking into the calm sea by the docks, calm and muddily opaque, and whenever he dangled his feet off the edge of the docks the nanny watching him would swiftly admonish him in a panicked voice. They would lecture him about dirt and bacteria in the water, paranoid that it would make him sick as he tucked his damp shoes quickly under his knees. Those small horrors stayed hidden, unseen, and Schiller had never come close to daring to discover them, only watching the sweet lull of the waves. It was Rilke instead who had teetered too close the edge, worried the caregivers into a frenzy as she danced carelessly through the aisles between the bobbing boats. She would toss their carrots from their packed lunch into the water, too, so they wouldn’t have to finish them, and they had splashed almost violently, breaking the water’s surface in agitated ripples before sinking into the depths outside of their vision.

She hated the sea, tossed rocks at it like she could damage it, fight it into submission. She liked to disturb its calm, smooth surface, watching it break, piercing eyes always looking for secrets hidden underneath like they were monsters that could climb up and swallow the two of them whole. He had never understood why, if she were so afraid, she would continue to break that surface – throw a wayward comment, spit out a remark, bend the border until it breaks – if she could flare up the temper of the creep underneath -

His body lurches, jumping up as Rilke plops down on the other end of the window seat. She’s still angry, her nimble fingers whipping through the pages of her chosen book hard enough to rip the pages, but luckily the height of her fire had dimmed.

“Marlene set him up in a room on the other side of the estate, at least,” she mutters, and Schiller refocuses on the words in front of him, burying himself in the comforting smell of old books. “We won’t have so much trouble avoiding him.”

#

The first week goes by easily. The twins barely see him, tucked too far into the calm solitary of their bookish alcove most days to care about the usual going ons of the estate. When they do scamper their way along the winding corridors and garden pathways, trying to find any scraps of entertainment to fend off the ever impending boredom, they never see him. Each time they pass through the wing with his room, he’s nowhere to be seen, and the only indication of change outside of the scent of coffee beans wafting through the dining rooms and kitchens is the thin slice of light shining through the cracks in his closed door, lit up throughout all hours of the night. 

The second week is just as uneventful, if not for his more regular, but still passing, appearances.

Schiller almost allows himself a sigh of relief, but holds onto the long-held breath until the start of the third week, when he takes a more active, overbearing approach to his exploration of the estate. Whenever he finds them, he’s swiftly spying over their shoulders, a looming shadow crossing the physical thresholds of his space and setting off some of Schiller’s alarms. He wraps his arms around their shoulders, failing to hide his grimace whenever squeezing the two of them closer to him is met by subtle but heavy resistance. Schiller answers his questions curtly, voice soft and clipped where Rilke stays silent, always glowering, never hiding her distaste.

It’s still easy to stay out of his path – the estate is grand and sprawling, if deteriorating - but by the fourth week whatever hopes Schiller had of finding his usual routine again slowly starts to erode. The vast, open foyers let their uncle’s screams echo and travel far enough to intimidate maids three corridors over. The fifth week, he finds Marlene whimpering on her hands and knees, scooping the remnant shards of a broken rum bottle off the floor of the library lobby.

Schiller crouches down to help her despite her negations, giving her his handkerchief. “Tell the rest to come to one of us if they need to hand in a notice,” he says, helping her stand with a soft smile. “Don’t worry about going to our uncle.”

Rilke only clicks her tongue – but not at either of them - as she stomps her feet, muttering curses under her breath.

She takes to locking the library doors from that point on.

#

It continues for weeks; Rilke and Schiiler burn through lavender incense in the library until its smell is engrained within the soft and creaking wood of the shelves and floorboards, walking through the halls with careful vigilance when working through Shakespeare and poetry compilations like clockwork starts to rot their brains more than stimulate them. Schiller wonders and worries in equal parts, anxiety warning him to stay away like it were detecting a foreign invader, an imminent harm, only for him to ponder what is setting them off.

The soft agitation escalates into a klaxon call, a silent screech in his skull as the summer turns into a brisk fall that frosts over the fallen leaves along the riding trails that loop around the village.

They converged on the ending paths towards the stables across the road from the estate, enough of it rented to the point that they practically owned it. Schiller had spotted him in between the calm tempo of his horse’s bobbing ears, trying to time his breath and heartbeats to the rhythm of hoof beats thumping against the packed earth. He hears Rilke’s horse skitter behind him, the sensitive animal detecting her unease. 

The two of them trot by, Schiller nodding curtly to his uncle. He’s bundled in a nylon jacket, a mug of coffee tucked in gloved hands – no doubt spiked – and he almost looks friendly as the two of them ride their way back to the holding stalls. He starts to walk in step with Schiller’s horse. 

“I was wondering where you two ran off too,” he muses, offering Schiller a hand he refuses as he dismounts “It isn’t really safe to go riding without anyone knowing, don’t you think?”

“The stable hands know we’re here, Uncle,” Schiller replies, rubbing the snout of his mare sweetly. “We have careful eyes on us-“

He’s interrupted behind him by a panicked whinny, followed by a shrieked curse. He whips around, frozen on the spot as he watches Rilke’s horse go wide eyed, nostrils flaring and ears pricked up as its hooves kick up plumes of dust in a fretful dance. Rilke, never one for tenderness or patience, tugs at her reins harshly, sitting deeply into the saddle, all too demanding for a spooked horse. It’s only a matter of time before her mare rears, and she topples backwards over its flank, legs flying up almost comically as she falls onto her shoulders, a whoosh of air forced from her lungs.

Schiller dives in too late and too focused, all eyes on calming the fearful horse in front of him that by the time he has its head low and feet still, his uncle has already moved to help Rilke onto her feet, knocked silly and careless by the blow of the fall.

It happens fast enough that Schiller could have missed it in a blink, over his shoulder as he leads the horse away to keep Rilke out of the aim of its legs. His uncle blocks part of the view, muttering softly something that was meant to be reassuring and getting Rilke halfway to standing-

She jolts violently, Schiller catching the way she bites her cheek to keep herself from making a noise. She whirls around, rigid and reeling, glaring with shock as she jumps out of his grip like she had just been burned. She hurries her way to Schiller, arms crossed over her chest like a dog that had just had its paw stepped upon - only her eyes were angrier, more incredulous and indignant than a loyal puppy’s would be, and not even close to being forgiving.

“What’s wrong, dear?” he asks too sweetly, the mask of his face twisting into an exaggeration of concern, his smile too big. “Does something hurt?” 

She breathes heavily, her fingers digging into Schiller’s arm like a talon.

“Do you think something might be broken?” he continues, and he has the gall to step towards them, arms open as if to accept their embrace. “Maybe I should take you to a medical-“

“We’ll call a stable hand,” Schiller says, mustering as steady a voice as he can. He meets the man’s eyes; a dare he isn’t ready to hold true on. Luckily, he doesn’t have to break eye contact first, turning away once the other man yields. “Thank you very much.”

“I see you two are self sufficient,” he chuckles, a jeer through his teeth. He walks out slowly, each step deliberate, his shoulders squared and his hands clasped behind his back almost elegantly. “I’ll see you at dinner tonight, hopefully.”

“I wouldn’t fucking count on it,” he hears Rilke hiss, and she snatches her horse’s reins from Schiller’s hold, disappearing into another holding stall before Schiller can question the waver in her tone.

#

She’s silent, stiff as a statue, perched too firmly on their window seat.

“Rilke,” Schiller says softly over the top of his current novel. “You didn’t get hurt from the fall yesterday, did you?” She had been like this ever since she had taken her tumble, keeping tightly to herself physically and in attitude. Whatever it was, it looked more than embarrassment to him – Rilke never showed if she was embarrassed in the first place – a caution and unease settled deep into her sore bones. 

The motions play in his mind; the peek of that man lifting Rilke by the arm from under the neck of her horse, the flinch that had wracked her body almost violently, the shine in her startled eyes that was so foreign to her that Schiller had only labelled it as fear after the fact.

“I’m fine,” she replies, deadpan. Schiller doesn’t push it.

#

Schiller glues himself to his sister’s side, the two inseparable. 

In that regard, nothing really changes.

Their library stays their base, lined with scavenged pillows and blankets, snackfoods from the corner stores on the main streets of the village nestled into the nooks and crannies where the maids won’t find them. They tear through each book hungrily, reading and rereading, barely discussing them but finding a gentle comfort in their silent companionship. They make the window seat farthest from the library doors their home, and they’re able to look over the expanse of the courtyards that barely shift in the brisk wind, the rattle of the old, grimy windows almost loud enough to drown out their intruder’s drunken rants. Their ventures through the corridors are almost always together – slowly shifting towards practicing with Schiller’s shotguns as the trails become too icy to ride, searching the dens for musty old board games, and never, ever passing by his wing of the estate.

They get restless though, and one day Rilke breaks, seething as she throws on her boots and jacket and rushes out into a blistering storm during an argument that rocks the estate on its foundation. Schiller hides in their little recess of the library, alone, making himself unseen to avoid the worst of the fallout. When he wakes up, cheek numb against the cold glass of the window, the sky is black, and the moonlight illuminates the flurries falling in chilling shades of sea green blues. 

He races to the main foyer. His heart sticks in his throat when he sees the latch on the big oak doors, turns it, looking out into the white of the bitter winter.

When he sees Rilke against the doorframe, it leaps out of his throat, dragging a cracked sob along with it.

“He locked the door on me,” she coughs through chattering teeth. Schiller wraps his arms around her, pushing frozen strands of hair from her frostbitten cheeks. “That bastard locked the door on me.” 

They stumble back to the library arm in arm, Schiller babbling incoherently, his words a mix of admonishments and utter apology. She doesn’t snap at him like he expects, no defense of her racing from the house, no anger at him abandoning her outside in the cold that had sapped all the energy from her body. She just leans on him, sitting silently by the fireplace. She relishes the heat, shivering as the gunmetal blue tint sluggishly seeps from her fingertips.

They don’t find any crackers in any of their stashes, so they eat sticky marshmallows off their fingers, melted chocolate smudging their cheeks. The laughter is soothing, a warmth the fireplace can’t match as they slowly drift off, and when they wake up again they’re still cozy even though the embers had simmered down to pinprick stars in the ash of the hearth.

#

The snow melts, the spring hesitant to arrive. For a precious, fleeting moment, Schiller lets himself breath in the new season and hopes that the worst is over.

He’s stupid enough to fail to see that the worst was only waiting right over the horizon.

#

Her sobs shake the floor of the library like an earthquake, each one a bombshell burying itself into the ground.

It’s horrible, grating on Schiller’s ears, almost worse just because of how unaccustomed he is to the sound of her crying. He approaches like he’s found an animal dying in a trap; slowly, stance gentle and patient, as if she would frighten at the sight of him coming closer. He seats himself at his usual spot by the window, but the view from his seat is wrong, something is wrong, everything is wrong.

She lets him lean towards her, grips his fingers when he takes her hands. There’s something there beyond the search for comfort, a warning, a fear, and an apprehension that yields when he moves the raise the hem of her sleeve.

Bruises bloom on her wrist like wilting flowers in sickly tones of purples and yellows and greens, a mold eating away at her pale skin. She flinches, body wracked by another fit of sobs as his eyes widen. She doesn’t meet them, only looks down at her knees as she wipes the tears flowing freely from her cheeks. 

Schiller’s voice is a ghost of a breath, scared to exist, even more terrified of the answer it will receive. “What happened?”

“He-,” Rilke sniffs wetly, curling further into herself. Her voice is reedy and broken, shattered like glass as she stutters through. “H-he just grabbed me, and I tried but I couldn’t move. I didn’t know – I didn’t know what to do Schiller, I couldn’t do anything, I didn’t know, I didn’t know.”

She sobs the words out like a chorus, one that rattles the walls of his mind to dust with its disjointed beat. He moves to hold her as her voice crescendos, threatening to break into a scream, losing itself as she buries her face in his shoulder, lets her tears soak in his sweater.

The world starts to crumble, and he covers her in his arms as the walls tumble down around him.

#

The bastard tries to be kind to them after it, and the next few days turn him into an incessant nuisance. He’s like a mosquito, trying to sap their approval and fear straight from their veins, and Schiller wants nothing more than swat him away for good.

Rilke has the bravery to do so – and her brother feels a jolt of something almost like pride, but much, much sadder - and Schiller follows like a puppy on her heels. But as much as he tries to trail her actions, he can feel the persistent tug of _him_ ; an excuse of some sort of encouragement from across the dining room, an offer to try his beer ‘like a man,’ foul jokes laughed on the stench of coffee and rum meant to make him smile but instead just make his stomach turn.

Schiller isn’t stupid; at least not as much as he is subservient. He can see the tactic plain as day, the subtle attempts to earn his favor, to paint Rilke in a negative light. He can feel the table trying to turn beneath his feet, struggling to get his obedient about face. That excuse of a man was trying to be his friend, trying to sweep his actions under the rug with amicability.

As if Schiller were pathetic enough to forget.

He knows Rilke. Stubborn. Almost cruel. But he _knows_ her, better than anyone he has or will ever meet. He’s known his sister since his first moments, when his heart beat in time with hers long before they had even seen the light of the sun. 

And even she would know that he wasn’t that big of a pushover.

#

“Schiller, my boy,” comes the awful cadence of expected heckling. A rough hand on his shoulder, the stench of cologne mingling with a greasy breakfast. “I never did learn about any hobbies of yours; I hope you don’t think it too late for me to try

“I know we all got off on the wrong foot-” Schiller hides a scoff “-and I don’t want our relationship to keep snowballing from that. Would you be willing to start off from scratch?”

Schiller almost laughs, ready to shunt the arm off his shoulders and run up the stairwell as fast as his feet could carry him. He wants to yell, to scream, to have the bravery to turn and look into the man’s face and ask why he wouldn’t ask his dear sister with her same steely calm, the type he always tried and failed to mimic.

He digs deeper than that, though, ignoring the race of his thumping heart in his ears and finds the bravery for something else in the frozen air of his lungs, igniting the flicker of an idea that blooms like spilled ink in the back of his mind.

“I’d love to, Uncle”

#

The snow had mostly gone now, revealing the frosted undergrowth as it slowly emerged from dormancy. The shrubbery was only just starting to take on the tint of life again after the winter, tentative to blossom back into its familiar lively greens, swallowing up the remnants of the shriveled fall leaves in twisting vines and foliage. 

Schiller’s feet crunch along the edges of the hunting trail, and he somehow smiles to himself despite the way his hands shake in his pockets, how the frantic pulse in his chest threatens to leap from his throat like acid. He scans the newly blooming greenery, and he almost empathizes with its eager brightness against the still slate sky, impatient to open themselves to the new warming weather but afraid of the looming threat of a cold snap, a change that would freeze the water in their veins. When his boots veer too far off the footpath, the mud is wet and sticky, sucking his feet in as he struggles to release himself again. 

All around him life was slowly crawling out of its latency, the colours and sounds of the spring rubbing their drowsy eyes awake against the shining sun. Each breath of fresh air he drank in smelled of fresh leaves and wet bark, earthy condensation filling the distant spaces of his lungs where the biting winter had chilled them. He’s thankful for how steadying it is.

The man leading him clashes violently with the soft shapes and hues bordering the trail; as he walks, it is almost as if the surrounding trees shrink back from his presence, afraid his touch would make them shrivel. With his black trenchcoat billowing, the snowmelt splashing and spreading its dying chill as it is disturbed by his heavy footfalls, he looks like a reaper clinging onto the last vestiges of the deadness of the prior season. 

Schiller stays a safe distance behind, close enough to keep him in range but far enough from those awful hands’ reach. His own hands itch to grab at the long, heavy weight along his back; instead, he makes do with fiddling with the strap pressed along his chest, almost suffocating him like a noose.

There’s a shuffle in the bushes nearby, and Schiller signals to stop – a sharp, staccato shush and a gloved finger to his lips – playing his part just a little further now that they were at the apex of the trail. He peruses into the dark pockets between the leaves, sees nothing more than scared, black eyes staring back at him.

He reaches behind him, turns the shotgun strapped to his back around. His fingers are practiced, going through the motions automatically; the click of the safety lock, the slip of the bullet and the snap of the barrel back in place, the pressure of the butt against his shoulder as he looks down his sights.

He trembles through it all, heart jackhammering at his ribs, and he pulls the trigger sloppily. The shot rings out, whining in his ears, and a blur of fur tears out of the foliage in a terrified sprint before disappearing into the woodland altogether. 

“Yikes,” says that awful, gravelly voice. It laughs mockingly. “Are you sure hunting is your best hobby?”

“It is,” Schiller says, unfocused. The smell of hot metal and burnt gunpowder dizzy his senses, the taste of it bitter on his palate. His tongue is lead in his mouth, unable of any other words; he envies the poor prey that had just skittered off, praying for some chance to flee for just a minute before he clamps down his jaw and squares his feet.

“Sorry kid,” comes the reply, “you just have some shit aim.”

“I’m usually better with bigger targets when I start off,” Schiller says innocently. He laughs, a bubble of hysteria lodged in his windpipe. “Good thing you’re here, hm?”

“Excuse me?” Their eyes meet, and once again Schiller has to fight the urge to turn and run. He forces himself to stay, and this time it is a dare, one he won’t back out of first. 

The slip of the bullet.

“I’m not stupid,” although the bastard must be to have agreed to this outing, a thought that is left unsaid. Schiller peeks down down the twin barrels as the shell slips down into the darkness. “Did you think I didn’t know what you did?”

The snap of the barrel, the mechanisms in place.

When Schiller glances back up, the fear in the man’s face is superimposed on his retinas in astounding clarity, shining eyes wide and face slack at the dawning realization; for once in his miserable, domineering life, he’s the prey at the wrong end of the shotgun, and his karma will not be pretty.

The pressure of the gun against his shoulder, looking down his sights.

“Don’t worry,” Schiller placates. For once, his voice is strong, his stance is steady, and his resolve is steel. He glues the last flecks of life present in the eyes of the man in front of him to his brain, and oh so wishes Rilke could have been able to seen it herself.

“The next shot won’t miss.”

#

He hyperventilates as he walks back home, vomiting over the threshold of the main foyer, and that’s all he really remembers as the next week passes in a dazed flurry.

There’s no funeral, or if there is, he and his sister don’t go. Schiller’s breakdown lasts a couple days, the maids and barely family eking out what little information is intelligible from his incoherent, tearful babbling. In the end, not even he knows what story he gives them; whether it was blamed on an errant shot - a blatant lie he would never be sly enough to muster - or an attacking feral animal – he’s not sure there’s anything big enough in the surrounding woodlands to do such fatal damage – or stumbling down a bluff into one of the ravines – had Schiller even recalled trying to get rid of the evidence? He wasn’t even told if a body was recovered.

It is presented as an accident either way, and Schiller doesn’t have the steady mindset in that moment to laugh at how the roused company played him off as such an innocent, so incapable. So once the fuss is over, their aunt - he thinks? – leaving to handle affairs from a distance, the estate settles back into its uneasy routine. 

Whatever, whenever it had started, despite everything that could have gone wrong, it was over, and Schiller finally lets himself breath easy. 

#

Schiller settles back into their shared alcove like slipping into an old, worn shoe, and it seems to almost embrace him like a long lost friend, wrapping him up in arms of wool and lavender as the shining spring sun warms him, thawing him down to the bone.

Spring had finally made her presence known in full, shining through the towering library windows like liquid gold, the stained glass casting the sunlight drifting in like melted gemstones across the wallpaper. Dust mites float in its heat, cast up into the air with the force of furious spring cleaning, shining like tiny bits of dying stars. He inhales, losing himself in the scent of ink and old wooden furniture and musty carpet and cushions, the crinkle of each page he flips like a song.

Rilke barely says anything when he returns, and he’s almost happy to settle into this familiarity without comment; but his sister fidgets, looking at him with her wary, tired eyes, scanning him like a puzzle she was almost in awe of. 

“What happened out there?” she breathes, and her voice wavers, as if afraid of the finality of his answer. “They wouldn’t tell me. They kept you away, and all I heard was that he-he was gone.”

Her eyes shine with unshed tears, and despite the stern set of her shoulders, the tall arc of her back growing more steady as she saps her bravery back into herself again, she looks to her brother for reassurance. She had missed him.

“He is,” Schiller says. “He’s not coming back.”

“And did you-?” her voice cracks, her teeth worrying her lower lip. Her eyes flood, and a single tear lets itself fall, glistening in the golden light of the day seeping in.

“He’s gone,” he says. “I won’t let him hurt you again, I promise.”

“I know, little brother,” Rilke sighs, and she utters a thick laugh, scrubbing at her face with the back of her hand.

Schiller moves forward, wrapping his arms around her; it felt so good to have her weight there. He runs his fingers through her hair as her sobs even out, each one cleansing, as if she were coughing out a poison that had been stirring in her belly for months. They promise to keep each other safe forever, and she tells him that she loves him, and he knows, he knows it like it was programmed in his genes, like the fact existed since before this library nook, since before them, before time and space itself.

# 

The world does end, sooner than anyone could have guessed, and Schiller burns with the brilliant wings of a thousand sunlit days before the devil finally smites him, knocking him out of the sky.

He falls like Icarus, the corners of his vision going blacker than black, growing final as the world falls apart around him for a second time. He almost laughs at the experience of it all, of the smell of fire and smoke and ash as the last of his consciousness and the flames slip from his fingers as his body slams into the earth like a comet breaking the atmosphere.

It all burns around him, like the stench of gunpowder, the crackle of the fireplace on freezing winter nights in the library, of burning lavender incense and old books.

He was born to die, and he does exactly that, lying prone in his sister’s arms as she tries not to cry over him, and despite the vertigo of his blood loss and the agony throbbing in his open, gaping chest and the evil looming over her shoulder in a black cloud of nothingness, he offers her one last smile.

She leans in, hugging him tight, and he loses himself in the smell of embers on her clothes and in her hair, so familiar, so familiar, his last regret having to leave her before falling back into the gentle arms of endless sleep, and its like folding himself into their corner of the library one last time.

**Author's Note:**

> *Tosses Hellwalkers to the side* *Shoves that broken lamp into Gordon's hands* Finish the job or I will.


End file.
